Monthly Archives: May 2006

Lacrosse’s Mount Union loses

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D3sports.com’s Gordon Mann and I had the pleasure of covering one of the best Division III contests I’ve ever seen, the Division III men’s lacrosse championship game between Cortland State and Mount Union.

Whoops, I mean Salisbury. The Sea Gulls came in with a 69-game winning streak and were working on their fourth consecutive national title. They didn’t quite get there, as Mike Felice scored with 2.2 seconds left in overtime to give Cortland State a 13-12 win.

Turnstile count for the day’s games (the contest was a doubleheader with Division II at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field) was 23,990, the largest in the history of the event.

We’ll have a photo gallery of the game up later, probably sometime Monday afternoon. Also, Gordon was here writing about a pair of Cortland State football players who played key roles on the lacrosse team. We’ll have that story as well.

Birmingham-Southern, welcome to D-III

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Birmingham-Southern fans, coaches, student-athletes:

Welcome to Division III.

We don’t harbor any delusions that you want to be here. From the outside, Division III doesn’t compare very favorably to Division I. But let’s be honest: Birimgham-Southern wasn’t a Division I power, and the trip from Division I mid-major to Division III isn’t as far as you might think.

Your school is giving scholarship money to more than 200 people solely based on athletic ability. When that stops, your institution will be able to redirect that money to award need-based or academic-based aid. That will raise the level of the student body and, in fact, will increase the value of your degree.

You may not think much of your likely new fellow conference members, but let’s be honest — it’s not like the Big South is populated by well-known names. High Point? UNC Asheville? Radford? Winthrop? Rhodes, Trinity University, Austin College, Colorado College and others have stellar reputations, and they are not based on being on the 13, 14 or 15 line every March … or by being the brainchild of a televangelist.

Coaches and administrators: I expect you have no desire to be in Division III. If you are at all conflicted about the Division III mission, I would suggest leaving. You can’t be half-hearted about Division III. It’s a challenge. But if you’ve ever faced a halfway-decent Division III program you know one thing: This is not glorified high school ball.

A further discussion of the issues is posted in our Q&A with Birmingham-Southern president David Pollick.